The Mysterious Mr Quin (16 page)

He shook his head again and sighed. Then he looked at Mr Quin.

‘So you can’t help me?’ he said wistfully. ‘On other occasions–’

‘On other occasions you have proved successful owing entirely to your own efforts,’ said Mr Quin gravely. ‘I think it will be the same this time. If I were you, I should go to Abbot’s Mede now.’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘as a matter of fact that is what I thought of doing. I can’t persuade you to come with me?’

Mr Quin shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘my work here is done. I am leaving almost immediately.’

At Abbot’s Mede, Mr Satterthwaite was taken at once to Margery Gale. She was sitting dry-eyed at a desk in the morning-room on which were strewn
various papers. Something in her greeting touched him. She seemed so very pleased to see him.

‘Roley and Maria have just left. Mr Satterthwaite, it is not as the doctors think. I am convinced, absolutely convinced, that Mother was pushed under the water and held there. She was murdered, and whoever murdered her wants to murder me too. I am sure of that. That is why–’ she indicated the document in front of her.

‘I have been making my will,’ she explained. ‘A lot of the money and some of the property does not go with the title, and there is my father’s money as well. I am leaving everything I can to Noel. I know he will make a good use of it and I do not trust Roley, he has always been out for what he can get. Will you sign it as a witness?’

‘My dear young lady,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, ‘you should sign a will in the presence of two witnesses and they should then sign themselves at the same time.’

Margery brushed aside this legal pronouncement.

‘I don’t see that it matters in the least,’ she declared. ‘Clayton saw me sign and then she signed her name. I was going to ring for the butler, but you will do instead.’

Mr Satterthwaite uttered no fresh protest, he unscrewed his fountain pen and then, as he was about to append his signature, he paused suddenly. The name,
written just above his own, recalled a flow of memories. Alice Clayton.

Something seemed to be struggling very hard to get through to him. Alice Clayton, there was some significance about that. Something to do with Mr Quin was mixed up with it. Something he had said to Mr Quin only a very short time ago.

Ah, he had it now. Alice Clayton, that was her name.
The little bit of a thing
. People changed–yes,
but not like that
. And the Alice Clayton he knew had had brown eyes. The room seemed whirling round him. He felt for a chair and presently, as though from a great distance, he heard Margery’s voice speaking to him anxiously. ‘Are you ill? Oh, what is it? I am sure you are ill.’

He was himself again. He took her hand.

‘My dear, I see it all now. You must prepare yourself for a great shock. The woman upstairs whom you call Clayton is not Clayton at all. The real Alice Clayton was drowned on the “Uralia”.’

Margery was staring at him. ‘Who–who is she then?’

‘I am not mistaken, I cannot be mistaken. The woman you call Clayton is your mother’s sister, Beatrice Barron. You remember telling me that she was struck on the head by a spar? I should imagine that that blow destroyed her memory, and that being the case, your mother saw the chance–’

‘Of pinching the title, you mean?’ asked Margery bitterly. ‘Yes, she would do that. It seems dreadful to say that now she is dead, but she was like that.’

‘Beatrice was the elder sister,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘By your uncle’s death she would inherit everything and your mother would get nothing. Your mother claimed the wounded girl as her
maid
, not as her
sister
. The girl recovered from the blow and believed, of course, what was told her, that she was Alice Clayton, your mother’s maid. I should imagine that just lately her memory had begun to return, but that the blow on the head, given all these years ago, has at last caused mischief on the brain.’

Margery was looking at him with eyes of horror.

‘She killed Mother and she wanted to kill me,’ she breathed.

‘It seems so,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘In her brain there was just one muddled idea–that her inheritance had been stolen and was being kept from her by you and your mother.’

‘But–but Clayton is so old.’

Mr Satterthwaite was silent for a minute as a vision rose up before him–the faded old woman with grey hair, and the radiant golden-haired creature sitting in the sunshine at Cannes. Sisters! Could it really be so? He remembered the Barron girls and their likeness to
each other. Just because two lives had developed on different tracks–

He shook his head sharply, obsessed by the wonder and pity of life…

He turned to Margery and said gently: ‘We had better go upstairs and see her.’

They found Clayton sitting in the little workroom where she sewed. She did not turn her head as they came in for a reason that Mr Satterthwaite soon found out.

‘Heart failure,’ he murmured, as he touched the cold rigid shoulder. ‘Perhaps it is best that way.’

I

Mr Satterthwaite was at the Opera and sat alone in his big box on the first tier. Outside the door was a printed card bearing his name. An appreciator and a connoisseur of all the arts, Mr Satterthwaite was especially fond of good music, and was a regular subscriber to Covent Garden every year, reserving a box for Tuesdays and Fridays throughout the season.

But it was not often that he sat in it alone. He was a gregarious little gentleman, and he liked filling his box with the élite of the great world to which he belonged, and also with the aristocracy of the artistic world in which he was equally at home. He was alone tonight because a Countess had disappointed him. The Countess, besides being a beautiful and celebrated woman, was also a good mother. Her children had been attacked by that common and distressing disease, the mumps, and the Countess remained at home in
tearful confabulation with exquisitely starched nurses. Her husband, who had supplied her with the aforementioned children and a title, but who was otherwise a complete nonentity, had seized at the chance to escape. Nothing bored him more than music.

So Mr Satterthwaite sat alone.
Cavalleria Rusticana
and
Pagliacci
were being given that night, and since the first had never appealed to him, he arrived just after the curtain went down, on Santuzza’s death agony, in time to glance round the house with practised eyes, before everyone streamed out, bent on paying visits or fighting for coffee or lemonade. Mr Satterthwaite adjusted his opera glasses, looked round the house, marked down his prey and sallied forth with a well mapped out plan of campaign ahead of him. A plan, however, which he did not put into execution, for just outside his box he cannoned into a tall dark man, and recognized him with a pleasurable thrill of excitement.

‘Mr Quin,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite.

He seized his friend warmly by the hand, clutching him as though he feared any minute to see him vanish into thin air.

‘You must share my box,’ said Mr Satterthwaite determinedly. ‘You are not with a party?’

‘No, I am sitting by myself in the stalls,’ responded Mr Quin with a smile.

‘Then, that is settled,’ said Mr Satterthwaite with a sigh of relief.

His manner was almost comic, had there been anyone to observe it.

‘You are very kind,’ said Mr Quin.

‘Not at all. It is a pleasure. I didn’t know you were fond of music?’

‘There are reasons why I am attracted to–
Pagliacci
.’

‘Ah! of course,’ said Mr Satterthwaite, nodding sapiently, though, if put to it, he would have found it hard to explain just why he had used that expression. ‘Of course, you would be.’

They went back to the box at the first summons of the bell, and leaning over the front of it, they watched the people returning to the stalls.

‘That’s a beautiful head,’ observed Mr Satterthwaite suddenly.

He indicated with his glasses a spot immediately beneath them in the stalls circle. A girl sat there whose face they could not see–only the pure gold of her hair that fitted with the closeness of a cap till it merged into the white neck.

‘A Greek head,’ said Mr Satterthwaite reverently. ‘Pure Greek.’ He sighed happily. ‘It’s a remarkable thing when you come to think of it–how very few people have hair that
fits
them. It’s more noticeable now that everyone is shingled.’

‘You are so observant,’ said Mr Quin.

‘I see things,’ admitted Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I do see things. For instance, I picked out that head at once. We must have a look at her face sooner or later. But it won’t match, I’m sure. That would be a chance in a thousand.’

Almost as the words left his lips, the lights flickered and went down, the sharp rap of the conductor’s baton was heard, and the opera began. A new tenor, said to be a second Caruso, was singing that night. He had been referred to by the newspapers as a Jugo Slav, a Czech, an Albanian, a Magyar, and a Bulgarian, with a beautiful impartiality. He had given an extraordinary concert at the Albert Hall, a programme of the folk songs of his native hills, with a specially tuned orchestra. They were in strange half-tones and the would-be musical had pronounced them ‘too marvellous’. Real musicians had reserved judgment, realizing that the ear had to be specially trained and attuned before any criticism was possible. It was quite a relief to some people to find this evening that Yoaschbim could sing in ordinary Italian with all the traditional sobs and quivers.

The curtain went down on the first act and applause burst out vociferously. Mr Satterthwaite turned to Mr Quin. He realized that the latter was waiting for him to pronounce judgment, and plumed himself a little. After all, he
knew
. As a critic he was well-nigh infallible.

Very slowly he nodded his head.

‘It is the real thing,’ he said.

‘You think so?’

‘As fine a voice as Caruso’s. People will not recognize that it is so at first, for his technique is not yet perfect. There are ragged edges, a lack of certainty in the attack. But the voice is there–magnificent.’

‘I went to his concert at the Albert Hall,’ said Mr Quin.

‘Did you? I could not go.’

‘He made a wonderful hit with a Shepherd’s Song.’

‘I read about it,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘The refrain ends each time with a high note–a kind of cry. A note midway between A and B flat. Very curious.’

Yoaschbim had taken three calls, bowing and smiling. The lights went up and the people began to file out. Mr Satterthwaite leant over to watch the girl with the golden head. She rose, adjusted her scarf, and turned.

Mr Satterthwaite caught his breath. There were, he knew, such faces in the world–faces that made history.

The girl moved to the gangway, her companion, a young man, beside her. And Mr Satterthwaite noticed how every man in the vicinity looked–and continued to look covertly.

‘Beauty!’ said Mr Satterthwaite to himself. ‘There is such a thing. Not charm, nor attraction, nor magnetism, nor any of the things we talk about so glibly
–just sheer beauty. The shape of a face, the line of an eyebrow, the curve of a jaw. He quoted softly under his breath: ‘
The face that launched a thousand ships
.’ And for the first time he realized the meaning of those words.

He glanced across at Mr Quin, who was watching him in what seemed such perfect comprehension that Mr Satterthwaite felt there was no need for words.

‘I’ve always wondered,’ he said simply, ‘what such women were really like.’

‘You mean?’

‘The Helens, the Cleopatras, the Mary Stuarts.’

Mr Quin nodded thoughtfully.

‘If we go out,’ he suggested, ‘we may–see.’

They went out together, and their quest was successful. The pair they were in search of were seated on a lounge half-way up the staircase. For the first time, Mr Satterthwaite noted the girl’s companion, a dark young man, not handsome, but with a suggestion of restless fire about him. A face full of strange angles; jutting cheek-bones, a forceful, slightly crooked jaw, deep-set eyes that were curiously light under the dark, overhanging brows.

‘An interesting face,’ said Mr Satterthwaite to himself. ‘A real face. It means something.’

The young man was leaning forward talking earnestly. The girl was listening. Neither of them belonged to Mr Satterthwaite’s world. He took them to be of the
‘Arty’ class. The girl wore a rather shapeless garment of cheap green silk. Her shoes were of soiled, white satin. The young man wore his evening clothes with an air of being uncomfortable in them.

The two men passed and re-passed several times. The fourth time they did so, the couple had been joined by a third–a fair young man with a suggestion of the clerk about him. With his coming a certain tension had set in. The newcomer was fidgetting with his tie and seemed ill at ease, the girl’s beautiful face was turned gravely up towards him, and her companion was scowling furiously.

‘The usual story,’ said Mr Quin very softly, as they passed.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Satterthwaite with a sigh. ‘It’s inevitable, I suppose. The snarling of two dogs over a bone. It always has been, it always will be. And yet, one could wish for something different. Beauty–’ he stopped. Beauty, to Mr Satterthwaite, meant something very wonderful. He found it difficult to speak of it. He looked at Mr Quin, who nodded his head gravely in understanding.

They went back to their seats for the second act.

At the close of the performance, Mr Satterthwaite turned eagerly to his friend.

‘It is a wet night. My car is here. You must allow me to drive you–er–somewhere.’

The last word was Mr Satterthwaite’s delicacy coming into play. ‘To drive you home’ would, he felt, have savoured of curiosity. Mr Quin had always been singularly reticent. It was extraordinary how little Mr Satterthwaite knew about him.

‘But perhaps,’ continued the little man, ‘you have your own car waiting?’

‘No,’ said Mr Quin, ‘I have no car waiting.’

‘Then–’

But Mr Quin shook his head.

‘You are most kind,’ he said, ‘but I prefer to go my own way. Besides,’ he said with a rather curious smile, ‘if anything should–happen, it will be for you to act. Goodnight, and thank you. Once again we have seen the drama together.’

He had gone so quickly that Mr Satterthwaite had no time to protest, but he was left with a faint uneasiness stirring in his mind. To what drama did Mr Quin refer?
Pagliacci
or another?’

Masters, Mr Satterthwaite’s chauffeur, was in the habit of waiting in a side street. His master disliked the long delay while the cars drew up in turn before the Opera house. Now, as on previous occasions, he walked rapidly round the corner and along the street towards where he knew he should find Masters awaiting him. Just in front of him were a girl and a man, and even as he recognized them, another man joined them.

It all broke out in a minute. A man’s voice, angrily uplifted. Another man’s voice in injured protest. And then the scuffle. Blows, angry breathing, more blows, the form of a policeman appearing majestically from nowhere–and in another minute Mr Satterthwaite was beside the girl where she shrank back against the wall.

‘Allow me,’ he said. ‘You must not stay here.’

He took her by the arm and marshalled her swiftly down the street. Once she looked back.

‘Oughtn’t I–?’ she began uncertainly.

Mr Satterthwaite shook his head.

‘It would be very unpleasant for you to be mixed up in it. You would probably be asked to go along to the police station with them. I am sure neither of your–friends would wish that.’

He stopped.

‘This is my car. If you will allow me to do so, I shall have much pleasure in driving you home.’

The girl looked at him searchingly. The staid respectability of Mr Satterthwaite impressed her favourably. She bent her head.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and got into the car, the door of which Masters was holding open.

In reply to a question from Mr Satterthwaite, she gave an address in Chelsea, and he got in beside her.

The girl was upset and not in the mood for talking,
and Mr Satterthwaite was too tactful to intrude upon her thoughts. Presently, however, she turned to him and spoke of her own accord.

‘I wish,’ she said pettishly, ‘people wouldn’t be so silly.’

‘It is a nuisance,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite.

His matter-of-fact manner put her at her ease, and she went on as though feeling the need of confiding in someone.

‘It wasn’t as though–I mean, well, it was like this. Mr Eastney and I have been friends for a long time–ever since I came to London. He’s taken no end of trouble about my voice, and got me some very good introductions, and he’s been more kind to me than I can say. He’s absolutely music mad. It was very good of him to take me tonight. I’m sure he can’t really afford it. And then Mr Burns came up and spoke to us–quite nicely, I’m sure, and Phil (Mr Eastney) got sulky about it. I don’t know why he should. It’s a free country, I’m sure. And Mr Burns is always pleasant, and good-tempered. Then just as we were walking to the Tube, he came up and joined us, and he hadn’t so much as said two words before Philip flew out at him like a madman. And–Oh! I don’t like it.’

‘Don’t you?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite very softly.

She blushed, but very little. There was none of the conscious siren about her. A certain measure of
pleasurable excitement in being fought for there must be–that was only nature, but Mr Satterthwaite decided that a worried perplexity lay uppermost, and he had the clue to it in another moment when she observed inconsequently:

‘I do hope he hasn’t hurt him.’

‘Now which is “him”?’ thought Mr Satterthwaite, smiling to himself in the darkness.

He backed his own judgment and said:

‘You hope Mr–er–Eastney hasn’t hurt Mr Burns?’

She nodded.

‘Yes, that’s what I said. It seems so dreadful. I wish I knew.’

The car was drawing up.

‘Are you on the telephone?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘If you like, I will find out exactly what has happened, and then telephone to you.’

The girl’s face brightened.

‘Oh, that would be very kind of you. Are you sure it’s not too much bother?’

‘Not in the least.’

She thanked him again and gave him her telephone number, adding with a touch of shyness: ‘My name is Gillian West.’

As he was driven through the night, bound on his errand, a curious smile came to Mr Satterthwaite’s lips.

He thought: ‘So that is all it is…“
The shape of a face, the curve of a jaw!
”’

But he fulfilled his promise.

II

The following Sunday afternoon Mr Satterthwaite went to Kew Gardens to admire the rhododendrons. Very long ago (incredibly long ago, it seemed to Mr Satterthwaite) he had driven down to Kew Gardens with a certain young lady to see the bluebells. Mr Satterthwaite had arranged very carefully beforehand in his own mind exactly what he was going to say, and the precise words he would use in asking the young lady for her hand in marriage. He was just conning them over in his mind, and responding to her raptures about the bluebells a little absent-mindedly, when the shock came. The young lady stopped exclaiming at the bluebells and suddenly confided in Mr Satterthwaite (as a true friend) her love for another. Mr Satterthwaite put away the little set speech he had prepared, and hastily rummaged for sympathy and friendship in the bottom drawer of his mind.